


Extracurricular Studies

by deadCartes



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: (because he is seven years old), Edward Elric Doesn't Swear In This One, Gen, children in peril that is mostly just amusing except to the responsible adult on hand, the Elrics don't try to cause problems on purpose, they get bored and then problems appear as a result, they're all ok though its cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28928031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadCartes/pseuds/deadCartes
Summary: It may be assumed that at some point Edward and Alphonse Elric probably received a formal education, however unwillingly. This does not, however, mean that they made it easy for those responsible.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22
Collections: Secret Snipers Exchange 2020





	Extracurricular Studies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NinjaUkulele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinjaUkulele/gifts).



It was a sunny late-summer day when the Resembool school term began again. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the sheep were wandering across the countryside being a nuisance. Edward and Alphonse Elric were escorted to their first day by their mother, along with Winry, who old Pinako had sent with the family while she worked on a rush-order repair. In their bags were the notebooks the general store in town made sure to stock this time of year, along with several textbooks the brothers had snuck from their father’s study while Trisha was picking up Winry.

“All they teach the first-year kids is baby stuff,” Ed had explained to his brother as he stuffed _Applied Exothermic Chemical Reactions: Vol. 3_ into his backpack. “Just hide whatever you want to read under the desk and sit at the back with me an’ Winry.”

Alphonse, five years of age and still working on writing his ‘p’s the right way ‘round, nodded solemnly and grabbed a well-loved copy of _Dialogues on the Philosophies of Natural Being_. Then their mother and Winry called to them from the front path and the brothers quickly made their way downstairs and out the door, taking exaggerated care to hide that their bags weighed about five times what they should.

In the back of Resembool’s old one-room schoolhouse, the brothers Elric daydreamed about covalent bonds and allotropes, while pretending to care about the lesson being carried out at the front of the room. Every so often, one of the two – usually Alphonse – would glance up attentively and scribble down an addition problem in his notebook. As soon as the teacher looked away, he would go back to reading the heavy volume half-hidden underneath his desk.

Winry, sitting next to the two boys, might have cared about the boys’ lack of attention if she were not buried in her own illicit reading material. Today, as a break from her usual parts catalogues and alloy tables, she had elected to some light reading about the history of Xerxian mechanical warfare courtesy of a book Ed had slipped her the moment his mother turned around to speak with their teacher. Thoughts of pulleys and counterweights danced in her head as she gave a contemplative glance towards Edward, who was now earning himself a scolding for having practiced a transmutation on his school desk and partially set it alight.

During their lunch break, sitting by the riverbank near the schoolhouse, Ed complained about the confiscation of his book, pending a conversation with his mother about appropriate learning activities and the place of fire in a learning environment.

“It’s not like I _wasn’t_ paying attention,” he pouted, arms flopped to his side as he stared up at the clouds. “Hydrocarbon-fueled combustion is basically pretty much like division, if you think about it.”

Alphonse, who had the good sense to stow his own reading material the moment he noticed the array Ed was testing, shrugged philosophically.

“Maybe if you’d done any of the work our teacher asked you to write down then she wouldn’t have taken the book,” he suggested. Ed sat up.

“Do you think that would work? Hey, Winry, can I copy-”

Winry shook her head.

“She already saw your notebook, Ed. She’s not going to forget what it looked like.”

She hadn’t done the work either, and frantically searched for a change of subject until her thoughts fell on a particular page she'd read just before Edward had his little science experiment.

“Hey, you guys can make basically anything with alchemy, right?”

“Not _everything_ , Winry,” Ed scoffed. “You need the right elements, and the composition, and-”

“Okay, but if you knew all _that,_ you could make whatever you wanted?”

Al nodded brightly. Edward squinted at her, trying to find the catch.

“What do you want to make?”

Winry flipped to the bookmarked page in her book and pointed. The Elric brother’s grins grew to match her own.

* * *

Sara Bauchman had spent the better part of two decades teaching the children of Resembool their letters and numbers. More importantly, she had survived a year of teaching in the same schoolhouse occupied by Trisha Elric’s eldest child. Thus far, this term was shaping up to look a lot like the last, which she personally counted as an improvement. When she had learned that there was a second Elric son slated to begin education, well, she’s not above admitting she contemplated moving back west to Central. With half the school day gone by with only a single incident of light arson, Alphonse was shaping up to be—well, it would be ideal if he tried a _little_ harder to hide the alchemy textbook, but at least he was _pretending_ to follow the lesson, and he hadn’t blown his desk up yet, so he was already leagues ahead of his elder brother’s first day.

Her rationalizing was interrupted by the sudden sounds of shrieking from outside. For a brief moment Sara stared down at her thermos of coffee, desperately willing the sounds of a child in peril to be someone else’s problem. There was a brief moment of silence, and then the noise resumed in earnest, now joined by what sounded like most of the class. Heaving a sigh, she stepped from her desk at the front of the room and to the schoolhouse’s front door.

She was greeted by the sight of Harlon Smith’s boy describing a perfect arc through the air overhead, proving to be surprisingly aerodynamic for a flailing five-year-old. His yells cut off with a tremendous splash when the boy disappeared past the lip of the riverbank and presumably landed dead in the middle of the water. She quickly strode to the top of the slope to see the kid swimming to the bank to join a small huddle of similarly soaked children, once again hollering his lungs out. Embedded in the riverbank on either side were several suspiciously-spherical boulders—also child sized—that she was quite certain were new additions.

Right. Well, if the kids were landing here – oh, and there went another – then all she had to do was follow the flight path and she’d find whoever was tossing grade-schoolers. She already knew who the culprits at the other end of this flying toddler rainbow were, but for a few moments she allowed herself the blissful delusion that it could be anyone other than-

“Winry Rockbell! Edward and Alphonse Elric! Put Baker down this instant or so help me I’ll walk you all to Pinako and Trisha _myself!”_

Alphonse froze from where he was helping Thomas Baker situate himself inside the bowl of what appeared to be some sort of trebuchet. Similarly, Edward stood stock still, like a deer in headlights, the pocket change he appeared to be collecting from the line of classmates clutched in his motionless hands. The young Ms. Rockbell, who had been industriously winching the tension bar and checking the extensive array of pulleys that permitted a seven-year-old girl to manually arm a siege engine, did not slow down.

Out of sheer disbelief rather than anything else, Sara watched the town mechanic’s daughter finish winding the counterweight back before pulling a lever, causing the whole thing to go flying in the opposite direction. The massive block of stone slammed down and the catapult arm swung up, relentless action followed merciless reaction, and Tommy was sent hurtling nearly a hundred meters towards the river, where he disappeared from view with a faint splash.

“...Right. All of you, back inside. Lunch break’s over. We _will_ be discussing this with your mother, boys, and your grandmother, miss Rockbell.”

* * *

The rest of the school day passed in blessed silence. Those students who had taken the death trap for a ride were understandably unhappy when they realized they had to spend the next few hours in dripping wet clothing. Those students who had not _yet_ taken the death trap for a ride were unhappy that they hadn’t gotten the chance. The three masterminds of the day’s excitement were trying their best to ensure Sara forgot they existed, thus avoiding the inevitable call to their guardians. Unfortunately for them, the megalithic siege engine had failed to disappear over the course of the reading and writing lessons, and so there was plentiful evidence of their misdeeds for a bemused Trisha Elric, who had been called to come to pick them up.

“And how did you get the wood for the beams?”

Edward proudly pointed to a stack of hay bales in the field on the other side of the road, which Sara was certain had been larger when she’d passed it that morning.

“We rolled over a coupl’a bales and used the straw for the cellulose an’ Al an’ I had done some plant transmutation before so this was just scalin’ up, an’ Win had all the plans in her book, so we knew how much to make, so we just transmuted the beams she asked for to make it!” Edward rushed out in one breath, excitedly waving his arms at the bales he had looted from, the wooden beams of their creation, and the rubbed-out remains of a very large transmutation circle. His mother smiled indulgently and nodded along.

“And the nails?”

Edward finally inhaled, no doubt preparing to wax poetic on iron concentrations in the soil, when Sara cleared her throat pointedly.

“I feel like what’s more important, in this case, is ensuring we don’t have a repeat of this incident, don’t you agree?”

Though temporarily emboldened by the appearance of an approving adult, the three children shrank on themselves slightly. Trisha hid her smile behind one hand.

“Of course, Sara. Thank you for reaching out to me, I’ll be sure to pass the story on to Pinako.” She turned to the three children.

“Alright, now, you boys know the rules. If you transmute something that isn’t yours…”

“… you gotta put it back after,” the boys replied. Alphonse with enthusiasm, and Edward with a scowling pout.

“Don’t see what the big deal is, it looks cool,” Edward mumbled.

“You were flinging your classmates into the river,” Sara retorted. “’Cool’ or not, you’re all very lucky nobody got hurt. If they had we’d be having a much _different_ conversation.”

“We did test shots with boulders, first. Calibrated the aim.”

Trisha clapped her hands, beatific smile still in place.

“Well then, boys, I suppose you’ll need to put those back too.”


End file.
